


courage is the drink of the spirit

by GStK



Category: Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roaring Twenties, M/M, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:01:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24219316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GStK/pseuds/GStK
Summary: but cowardice, my friend, is a tempting liqueur.
Relationships: Belial/Lucilius (Granblue Fantasy), Belial/Sandalphon (Granblue Fantasy), Helel ben Sahar/Sandalphon (Granblue Fantasy)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	courage is the drink of the spirit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheHangedMan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheHangedMan/gifts).



> This work depicts trans characters and trans character physicality. Take care and stay safe!

They walk across the Bridge of Wishes, hand-in-hand.

Lucilius is looking straight ahead, shielding his eyes from the setting sun to their right.

Belial has a Chesterfield dangling out the side of his mouth.

They’re just another couple of tourists walking across the Bridge of Wishes.

Lucilius pulls a book out of his pocket-- _Harriet and the Piper_ \--dipping his eyes low to the paper, heedless of anyone who might bump into him.

Belial interlocks their fingers and, wordless, guides him in and out of the waters of people.

They’re just any other couple on the Auguste Isles, chasing a dream.

Lucilius turns twenty pages by the time they make it across the bridge; when his feet touch soft ground, rather than cobblestone, he looks up.

Belial flakes away the ash from his cigarette and takes another inhale, leans down.

They’re just two men sharing a smoke-filled kiss on the bridge, or rather, just past it.

“What did you wish for?” says Belial.

“‘Wish?’” counters Lucilius.

“That was the whole point,” laughs Belial, dropping the cigarette and dominating it underneath his shoe. “If you pass the bridge at sunset, you make a wish and it comes true.”

“I know that. Don’t be so repetitive,” says Lucilius, unflappable.

“So what did you wish for?”

Lucilius puts the book back in his coat; the lace of his bandeaux peaks out from the low cut of his vest. Belial stares at it until Lucilius has his coat closed again.

They’re just two men of rather well-to-do standing; that much is obvious from the sharp lines of their clothes, even if Belial wears his suspenders out in the open air. They’re like smoke in a crowd that keeps forming and shifting around them, young souls rushing with tied hands like shooting stars across the bridge.

Finally, Lucilius speaks. “I wished to see the stars.”

“I could make you see stars,” responds Belial. A foot crashes into his shin. He laughs.

“To be among them,” Lucilius continues, “To touch them, feel their warmth.”

Belial waits.

“To crush them in my hands.”

With a grandiose smile, Belial takes the hand in his and kisses it, right upon the head of the warm diamond, the platinum ring.

Belial says, “I wished we would be together forever.”

Lucilius fixes him with a stern look. Belial shudders under the intensity of his gaze.

They’re just two married men on the edge of a bridge that will crumble before they die.

“You fool,” chides Lucilius. “Our wishes are the same.”

“They are,” agrees Belial, and he sweeps Lucilius into his arms, bending him far, leaning him towards the ground and tugging him into a kiss of passion.

Much to do about the very same dream.

* * *

The Celestial Strait is a special kind of speakeasy. The chairs are round; the lights are bright, with wide lakes of darkness in between. There’s a small stage where different singers serenade the crowd at different times. The cards fly in one corner. The bootlegged drinks come quick and fast in another. Men with their cigars talk philosophy in a private room tucked away behind the stage. It’s not so different that, at first glance, you notice it.

But sit and wait. See the gentle faces that dance through the swathes of bodies. See those same faces plant themselves at a card table, jaws chiseled now, soft syllables arriving roughly from their boyish throats. The Celestial Strait is --

“A place of transformation,” Ladiva brags from behind the bar. She slides Belial a Nibelung Glas and he plays with the curly straw.

“I’ve heard it all before,” Belial dismisses her, laughing when she pouts at him for interrupting. “What’s the news, sweetheart?”

“You want to know your onions?” teases Ladiva in a put-upon voice. She leans in across the bar, their elbows touching. “The good or the bad?”

“You know I like it both ways.”

Ladiva laughs in her girlish way. She teases a lock of blonde hair, falling clean around her face. “We had to kick Grimnir to the curb.”

“What? No,” gasps Belial, noisily sipping his cocktail.

“But! We acquired some new talent. You’ll see him sometime,” smirks Ladiva. She draws back behind the boundary. “We’re waiting for the spot to get prop-er-ly ossified.”

“I’ll look forward to it. Thanks, Ladiva,” says Belial, and the bartender sweeps herself away.

Presently he is joined by his very own killjoy, emerged from the philosophers’ quarters with an irate look on his face. Belial draws him in by the waist and they kiss. Lucilius smells like Lumacie cigars and grand ideas.

“How are the boys treating you, Cil?” pries Belial. He motions to the seat next to him but Lucilius does not take it-- meaning, he’ll be dipping back in soon to argue another vitriolic point.

“Imbeciles,” curses Lucilius. He has traded his vest and coat for long, flowing white robes that show through to the lucent curves of his body. Regardless of his attire, the _hes_ and the _hims_ pour like moonshine at a cabaret.

Belial traces his hands up and down Lucilius’ waist. He dips lower, too, to feel the beginnings of the black stockings clinging to his husband’s legs. His mouth is quite suddenly dry.

“Butt me,” says Lucilius impatiently. Belial obliges, fishing out a cigarette for him and lighting it between his fingers. Lucilius takes one puff and hangs it back, blowing the smoke to the ceiling. “Triple Alliance this, revisionist that,” mocks Lucilius. He steps away, but it shows that the shadow of Belial’s touch lingers, softening the scrunched-up lines on his face.

“You show them, darling,” encourages Belial, and Lucilius dissipates in a waterfall of white fabric. The cocktail sits sweet on his lips, sweeter than his thoughts, until the sight of pink distracts him.

“Gran!” he calls, and the blonde turns, cupping her hands to her mouth.

“Djeeta!” she corrects loudly, dispersing some of the dancers around her. “It’s Djeeta tonight!”

Someone loudly hushes her. She fans out her very short skirt, almost like a curtsy, leaving as quick as she came. (Belial will find her later, spread out over a card table, face flushed beneath the body of a performer as fingers trail in between her thighs. Baal’s her partner this time. How lucky!)

But then is not now and now is not then. Belial takes to his feet, plucking the strings of capricity while men and women and those in-between touch his exposed chest. Many hands invite him to dance, but he will not.

He smoothly dives into the philosophers’ room. At the same time, his ears prick, picking up the deep, inebriating sound of a new voice at the stage.

He’ll put a pin in that.

* * *

He plucks his lily from the ash-coated discussions, drags him into a guest room with black seashell wallpaper and hardwood pretending it’s really marble. He turns off the chrome lamp by the bedside. Yet, his wallflower takes one look at the sheets and turns up his nose, murmuring about how unhygienic it would be to lie where thousands of bodies have swapped fluids.

“Tell me,” says Belial, spreading Lucilius’ legs apart, “what you were discussing so passionately.”

It’s for two reasons. The sight of Lucilius in heated debate had stirred the coals in his belly. Plus, getting Lucilius to recall his arguments helps. It makes the sex less icy, more warm.

“They posited,” starts Lucilius, “They posited that unions were by and large the way of the future. Said man nor woman should likely never have to worry about his or her bounty ever again. Utter fools.”

“Did they talk about philosophers’ unions?” soothes Belial. His heart races when he grinds himself, length hard, against the softness of Lucilius’ inner thighs. Lucilius gives a stuttered breath.

“For teachers,” growls Lucilius. Belial finds him wet already, pushes one finger in, probing. He kisses the long column of Lucilius’ neck and nibbles the spots he wants to see bright red. “For teachers _only_. As though every man wishes to become… to become…”

“Yes? Go on. I’m listening.”

“... a professor,” sighs Lucilius, spreading his palms flat against the wall. “And what of those beyond the need for academia? I make theories, not tragedies. Oh.”

Belial laughs. “You think schoolchildren are a tragedy?”

With two fingers spreading him open, thrusting in and out of him, Lucilius does a great job at keeping his voice steady. “The new generation is a tragedy.”

Belial replaces his fingers with his cock, grinding his clothed hardness against his husband’s entrance. They both sigh in rigid satisfaction. Belial, ever the prepared one, gets a vial out of his pocket and coats his fingers.

“Not tonight,” warns Lucilius.

“I know, I know. Not tonight. Keep going,” Belial says. Cil is much more eager to continue when those two fingers prod at his ass, sinking in while the frottage continues unabated.

“A man needs the reins, of the government,” argues Lucilius in pants and groans, “In his hands, at all times-- a union is weak, groups are weak, men are… Belial.”

“Yes?”

“Belial,” murmurs Lucilius with more intention.

Lucilius tosses his head to the side, hair sweaty and damp, while Belial hitches a leg over the crook of his arm. The stockings tear in the most intimate of places. Lucilius utters a feeble curse against him, but he does not say to stop.

Belial grinds, pushing his cock and his fingers against Lucilius with great speed. Lucilius grapples with the wall, grapples with his tongue, issuing forth sounds he’ll deny later.

“Harder,” orders Lucilius.

Belial goes harder.

“Faster,” orders Lucilius.

Belial pauses his hips to focus on the motion of his fingers. Lucilius’ breath hitches, a sustained note going breathy, higher, higher, until he bites his lip and groans and gives that perfect little shudder.

Belial resumes his ministrations on the exhausted body beneath his own, pulling his cock from his trousers and working it with his hand. Lucilius closes his thighs around Belial’s cock in a tight circle. Belial swears, picking Lucilius up by both of his legs, holding him against the wall by his hips.

“Let me cum,” Belial begs, all want and need, need, need, under the cool stare of blue-white eyes. He curses all sorts of foul things, and he promises pretty words in the next second. “Let me cum, Cil.”

Lucilius doesn’t say a word. Lucilius pants, just a little, but he watches and watches and watches and Belial’s so sure he can’t take it any more,

Not until the blessed words pass from Lucilius’ lips. “Cum.”

He gives a sound like a croak and finishes at the command, cum coating the insides of Cil’s thighs. His husband makes a face when some of it hits the tears in his stockings, decorating his skin.

Belial sets the love of his life down. He kisses through his objections, his insults, carving his name with his tongue on the inside of Lucilius’ mouth.

“Who,” pants Belial, when they are both sorted back into their clothes, “did you hate the most? Back there in that room.”

Lucilius studies him carefully. “The man with the blonde hair and the toga.”

“A toga,” he laughs mirthlessly. “In this climate?”

Cil pulls away from him and leaves the warmth of his arms. He fixes his hair, a cursory glance into the mirror. He never likes to look at himself for long.

“You,” says Lucilius, like Belial is hardly worthy of being named, “Go have your fun with the other residents. I will take care of business.”

“Okay, sexy,” replies Belial, blowing him a kiss. Lucilius wrinkles his face in disgust. “See you soon.”

Lucilius leaves the room first. Belial waits for three minutes and then makes his own exit, licking the remainder of Lucilius’ taste off his thumb.

The new talent, the dark-eyed sparrow, has long finished his birdsong. He sits at a table in the dark, nursing a drink he doesn’t know how to down.

Birds are so cute, aren’t they?

* * *

“I have a fiancé,” Sandalphon says stiffly, flashing his platinum ring like a defensive ward against Belial’s defences. Sadly, it does not mean much when he is escorting Sandalphon backwards into the guest room. Sandalphon falls of his own will to the bedsheets.

“Oh, really? What’s his name?” Sandalphon scowls. “Her name? Is she here tonight?”

“ _He_ ,” stresses Sandalphon, who is obviously stressed, “is here. And his name is Ben.”

Belial crawls on top of him, kissing Sandalphon’s outstretched arm. Sandalphon snatches it away. He’d given his own name up wearily, stared at Belial like he was a monster the entire time they sat with their drinks. But here they are. Sandalphon’s underneath him, shivering like a leaf.

“Ben…?” Belial prods.

“Ben Shahar,” Sandalphon finishes indignantly, another line of protection. He seems jarred when Belial merely blinks at him. “He’s a professor. Auguste University of Theology. Obviously,” he grits out, “A sallow like you wouldn’t know the first thing about the faith.”

Belial laughs, and he hasn’t been able to stop, really, since he first approached Sandalphon. It’s just so queer. “Want to count rosary beads with me, Sandy? I know all the prayers.”

“I sincerely doubt that,” objects Sandalphon.

Belial mouths each and every rosary against Sandalphon’s bare stomach. His tongue traces the syllables into sun-kissed skin. Sandalphon shudders beneath him.

“Believe me now?”

“You’re disgusting,” Sandalphon says, spreading his legs wider.

“Mr. Shahar doesn’t teach you these things, does he?” Belial runs a single finger up the line of Sandy’s thigh, and he moans. “You’re just like a virgin.”

“Sex,” groans Sandalphon, “before marriage--”

“Is unacceptable in the eyes of the church. But so is alcohol, and you’re here at the Celestial Strait. Why don’t we pretend tonight just doesn’t count, hm?”

Belial reaches for the front of Sandalphon’s tights and Sandalphon snatches his wrist. A note of panic lines his eyes. Belial studies him for a moment, and then he nods in understanding.

“Oookay. How about I eat you out instead?”

Sandalphon stares at him with a lack of clarity. Belial thins his lips. “Is it shark week?”

 _That_ phrase, at least, Sandy understands. He blushes to the roots of his hair. “No!” he yells, furious.

“Then there should be no problem. Trust me, okay?” Belial flashes him a gentle smile. With the greatest of care, he peels Sandalphon out of his tights, kissing him all the way through. He strokes Sandy’s folds experimentally, marveling at the way the man arches like a tulip spreading its petals.

His tongue descends. He rolls it first over Sandalphon’s clit. He replaces his mouth with his fingers, there, playing with the nub while he makes the descent. Sandy is _loud_ no matter what he does. He licks him inside, just once, and Sandy has to hold both of his hands to his mouth to keep from screaming.

“Wow,” says Belial, lightly.

“Shut up,” Sandalphon cries.

The more his tongue explores, the more distance he maps, the fuller Sandalphon comes apart. He’s the Celestial Strait’s new singer, with a deep, rich voice like coffee beans. His eyes are a ruddy brown and his thighs are the most powerful force in the universe, crushing Belial’s head between them like a vice. These are facts he learns as he applies his mouth and performs his best work. Every moan and whisper of words he receives is a reward.

Sandalphon cums on his tongue. He arches, he moans out religious ecstasies, he trembles as if he’s been broken. Belial kisses the arch of his knee and draws out everything on his fingers, licking them clean.

The singer Sandalphon looks appalled at the sight. His ruddy eyes widen, and his vice-like thighs quiver. He says, lamely, “I have a fiancé.”

Belial nods. “Mr. Ben Shahar, Professor at the Auguste University of Theology, here tonight, arguing with the other philosophers about the need for unions.”

Slowly, carefully, Sandalphon begins to sober up. His face is still red. Helpfully, Belial seats him back in his tights. “I didn’t tell you where he is.”

“He’s blonde,” resumes Belial, “He’s wearing a toga. He’s thirty. He’s one of the richest men on the Auguste Isles. He refuses cigarettes on principle.”

“What are you--”

“He doesn’t like to argue,” Belial interrupts, “But he likes to see others argue. He’s very passionate about unions. And it’d be absolutely terrible if someone took his wealth and his passion the wrong way while the philosophers were talking. Am I right?”

Sandalphon has gone white in the face.

Belial flicks his stomach. “Takes a sallow to know one.”

Sandalphon bolts upright in the bed, but it’s too late. The gunshot rings out across the speakeasy. The screams and the chaos have already started. Sandy jerks out of his grip and runs out of the room. Belial draws a cigarette out of his pocket, lighting the Chesterfield and exhaling with a satisfied sigh.

Lucilius, Shahar, cigars, liquor, and most importantly, the chaotic tempers of men who carry arms. All Lucilius would’ve had to do is bend the winds against Shahar’s whims.

It’s too bad for the Celestial Strait. Belial liked this place. The lamps and the warm light and the singers and the easy sex; all of it’s going to be ruined on the edge of a bullet. Rumours will spread. The everyday people will think, _Why, what else could you expect? All those freaks. It was bound to happen_. And it was bound to happen, but not for the reasons they think.

Lucilius and his grudges know no bounds. Lucilius and his brilliant little plans know only the future. They will build it, brick-by-brick, with bloodless hands causing all manners of misdeeds.

Belial waits exactly three minutes before he extracts himself from the guest room. He makes for the exit, and Lucilius joins him in the middle of the fury. Their hands come together and their fingers lace, a natural roaring thing.

To himself, he says, fondly, “You can’t live forever; you can’t live forever.”


End file.
